Scenarios

Arguably, the most exhilarating hangover from adolescence is Christmas Eve. Namely, the appearance of TAFKATC at Christmas Eve. He'd call my mother's best friend to say he was coming round for dinner and every even-numbered year, I would actually manage to see him and it would be the greatest thing, ever.

I would swoon quite visibly. I would blush quite consciously. Due to the infrequency of our encounters, I would stockpile musical anecdotes throughout the year for the Christmas Eve unwrapping. I had all year to imagine his responses to my stories, but my imaginings had the tendency to be fanciful and inaccurate.

There are things you'd always predict, the low-light and the panettone, the delicate glassware and the lengthy glances. There would always be a flirtatious wit and ambiguous regard. What I couldn't predict was his actual character, quite distinct from my whimsical daydream of a musical obsessive.

I know there's no need to wait for that one night to gush about music. Not any more, at least. Yet, he will always command an impossibly high level of consequence. In spite of my claims that his appeal exists solely in an imagining, his presence manages to indulge that perennial suspicion that something once existed... and it was real.

Aversions

The writing amnesty has come as a surprise. I figured I'd always write, whether it'd take the form of morning pages, essays, scripts, emails, tweets or text messages. Lately, I've refrained from words, from inkstained hands and repetitious thoughts. The amnesty has come as a surprise, because I had always believed that to write was to feel normal. Even the most meaningless, mindless, pointless thoughts - get it down and you will siphon your heart.

I daydream a lot, I nightwalk a lot, I process very little. My existence is vague but I never seem to shake that tyrannical sense of obligation, that feeling like I should be getting it all down. I should be committing to my past and my present, I should be writing to connect, to make sense of the love and the loss. I try to convince myself that the writing amnesty is some perverse therapy, that the undefined will obscure the grief.

I'll have to start again somehow, but I'm not exactly sure when it will happen. I'm still convinced that to write is to feel normal, but I'm not inclined to rush back to that sense of normality. I'll keep dwelling upon the reconstructive power of creative inaction. I would never recommend it to anyone, but I'll think of its function, during those daydreams and nightwalks. I'll marvel at how it can be so easy and so difficult, all at the same time.